Labor has the green power to win

John M. Legge

The federal government is not short of advice, but much of it is deluded and more is barely concealed self-aggrandisement.

It has, if it cares to use it, an electoral strategy that should deliver it a landslide.

One of its policies has been a complete success, and that is the one that the Opposition has "bet the farm" on attacking. Australia's greenhouse gas emissions have started to fall: Australia is now burning less coal, conserving energy more, and using more renewable energy sources. Even maximum demand – the air-conditioner-driven peaks that are the justification for vast and wasteful expenditure on upgrading the electricity transmission system – are less intense.

In Victoria, the all-time peak demand of 10.4 million kilowatts was in January 2009, and the highest daily consumption averaged over a month was in July 2008. In NSW, the all-time peak demand of 14.6 million kilowatts was in February 2011 and the highest daily consumption averaged over a month was in July 2007. In Queensland, the load peaked at 8.9 million kilowatts in January 2010 and total consumption peaked in the same month.

On top of this, wind farms now supply 2.5 per cent of Australia's transmitted electricity, cutting coal use further.

Domestic solar panels now have a peak capacity equal to more than 8 per cent of Australia's coal-fired power stations, and these deliver peak power just as demand from air-conditioning peaks.

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Australia really can stand up in international forums and tell China and India that we are doing our bit to delay climate change, and that they should come onboard. The time for "do as we say, not do as we do" is past.

A has-been politician declared in 2007 that climate change was "the greatest moral challenge of our time" and then decided to do nothing about it, destroying his own moral authority and his leadership. He then chose to wreck Labor's 2010 election campaign by telling Laurie Oakes that "Julia made me do it".

Whatever Julia Gillard may have said in cabinet meetings, her government has responded to the great moral challenge, and done so successfully with very little disruption to the lives of ordinary Australians.

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The less carbon pricing affects the Australian economy the more hysterically Tony Abbott and his cheer squad attack it. The technique was demonstrated by American right-wing manipulator Karl Rove in the 2004 presidential election: a draft-dodging president (George W. Bush) challenged by a decorated war hero (John Kerry) was saved by an attack on the hero's reputation.

Swift-boating Labor over carbon pricing won't work. Power bills may be going up, but it isn't because of the carbon price, and a million or more households have taken matters into their own hands and installed solar panels to cut their demand for power from burning coal. As Queensland wades through floods and Melbourne sweats through the hottest March in history, climate change is a brutal reality, obvious to everyone.

Humanity has achieved this catastrophic state by raising carbon dioxide levels by 30 per cent in 50 years, and the changes are only just starting. If we don't take real action to de-carbonise the economy, today's children will be subject to unimaginable dangers from rising sea levels, rising temperatures and more frequent, extreme storms, floods and droughts.

Abbott has declared war on our grandchildren, with a farcical set of plans the only purpose of which is to increase the burning of coal, in Australia and overseas. His state government allies, Newman, O'Farrell and Baillieu, have joined in by slashing the incentives for household solar panels. On the pretence of stopping solar households enjoying a subsidy from the rest of us, they want to make solar households subsidise the electricity retailers and distributors.

New Victorian premier Denis Napthine has already walked away from one Baillieu commitment: this is another one more honoured in the breach than the observance.

Abbott is a threat to our grandchildren, but Australian coal is killing Indian children today: Greenpeace estimates that at least 80,000 Indians die every year from pollution caused by coal-burning power stations. Simply helping the Indians to burn coal more efficiently would save lives, but it wouldn't help Queensland's coal exports, so we know that Abbott would oppose any such initiative.

A few seductive voices call on Labor to build on its legacy as the "reform" party of the 1980s and early 1990s. They forget, or perhaps they remember, that these reforms were unpopular at the time and haven't gained much in popular affection since.

Before the reforms, Australia was a country that paid its way: we paid for imports with exports. After, we became a country that paid for its imports by taking on debt. As John Quiggin pointed out, the theories behind the reforms have been exposed as false by recent history and can now be summarised as "zombie economics"— dead ideas that still harass the living.

Exhuming past leaders or past policies won't win the next election for Labor, but building on its one real success could.